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The Features of Twitter You Need to Try

A business Twitter account allows you to interact with customers easier than ever before. You can have conversations with them at anytime and make critical announcements at a moment’s notice. Plus, you can make regular promotions of your products and services. These are some of the reasons people are questioning if Twitter is the new Facebook.

What you may not be aware of, though, are all of the amazing tools Twitter offers to propel you into a wider reach. These are a few tricks you should have up your sleeve to make sure you maximize your interactions with potential customers:

Use the appropriate hashtags

Hashtags can be very confusing if you’ve never used them before. Think of them as a topic that you’re searching for - like the product or service your business offers. So when someone wants to search Twitter for any posts related to carpet cleaning, they would search #carpetcleaning and come up with a long list of anyone who has included that hashtag in their post.

When you use hashtags, your tweets will not only spread to your followers, but well beyond. You can even use popular hashtags that people use for their personal accounts, like #ThrowbackThursday to show a historic moment in your business. You can check what’s trending on Twitter to see what hashtags are popular at that time. Just be sure you don’t use too many though, or you will appear less humanlike and come across more like spam.

Hashtags are also especially useful during events. Jump into the widespread conversations of #BlackFriday or #CyberMonday by using those hashtags. You will receive far more engagement this way.

Use Threads to String Tweets Together

When you have a topic you want to share with your audience that will take much more than Twitter’s word limit allows, consider creating a thread. This allows you to connect a series of tweets on a singular topic, and when people click on the tweet they can read your whole story or discussion in one sitting instead of hunting for the related tweets on your profile.

Since your tweets are all together, you have your audience's attention and they're able to read through all of your thoughts without their attention being diverted to another tweet.

Keep your Twitter organized

If you feel like you get lost every time you open your Twitter account, try using a third-party app to get organized. One that is recommended and free is TweetDeck, which is owned by Twitter. It allows you to create lists, get notified of tweets that are important to you, and even modify your notifications.

One of the big reasons this is a useful app is you can use it to manage several Twitter accounts at once without causing a huge headache. Also, you can schedule tweets in advance...something you can’t do on the app.

Start a poll

A unique way to interact with your followers is to create a Twitter poll. Not only is it helpful to you because you gather information, but it’s fun for users as well. All you have to do is create a question along with up to four answers. Then, it stays live for at least 24 hours. Once this timeframe is over, anyone who took the poll will be notified that the results are in and will therefore be driven back to your post.

Your polls should not always be serious. Some of the most successful polls can be related to food - like how you cut your peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Think outside-of-the-box when you create a poll, like asking fun facts about your business.

Create a Gallery

Once you have tweeted out a variety of media that include your photos and videos, you can make a gallery. This will be at the top of your profile and will be the first thing people see when they visit your Twitter. You can choose from not only your tweets, but ones that you have been mentioned in by other users.

You can select up to five media tweets for your gallery, so make sure to be choosey. Remember: your gallery should make a strong first impression. The more engaging it is, the more likely viewers will navigate to the rest of your tweets to learn more about your business.

Pin a tweet

Have an important tweet that you want your audience to see every time they visit your Twitter profile? Pinning a tweet is a function that allows you to keep a single tweet at the top of your Twitter profile page. This is a great way to promote events or other helpful tweets that you want your audience to see.

Remember, you can only pin one tweet at a time to the top of your profile. If you choose a different tweet to pin, your previous tweet that you had pinned will go back to your timeline in chronological order.

Post a Gif

We're huge advocates of humanizing your social accounts, and Twitter makes it easier than ever to post a GIF to your timeline. When you go to compose a tweet, there is a button that says 'GIF.' Click that and you can search through popular GIF categories, or you can perform a search to find a GIF for a certain topic.

The native search allows you to post GIFs to your account quickly and easily.

Promote your tweets

If you still aren't happy with your organic reach, you can promote your important tweets. While this will cost you some money, your tweets will show up in more users’ news feeds. That means you will extend your engagement far beyond your follower base, and will most likely get more interactions from potential customers. We took the time to explain how advertising on Twitter works to get you started.

Follow Twitter’s helpful accounts

While we have discussed a few ways to beef up your business Twitter account, these accounts will help you moving forward:

Quote Tweet

If you want to chime in on a tweet, but want your entire timeline to see it, use the 'Quote Tweet' feature, which allows you to add a comment to the top of the original tweet. This is great to start conversations with your audience about other tweets.

The more you stay on top of the new developments in the world of Twitter, the better for your business. You never know what new tools and services will help you spread the word about the usefulness of your products and services.

Need some more help with your Twitter and social media accounts?

Tony Adragna

Tony Adragna is a Copy Architect for Primitive Social. He has worked in the digital marketing field for over five years, and loves creating content that helps companies grow. Outside of work, Tony enjoys coaching basketball, technology, and reading.